Most Christians over the last two thousand years have believed that human beings were specially created in God's image. And being created in the image of God, believed that through human reason it was possible to discern truth about all areas of God's creation. God's creation is understood to have order and purpose. As human beings, we have a natural inclination to want to investigate that created order.
From the early Greek philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, to the early church fathers like Tertullian and Augustine, and later church leaders like Thomas Aquinas all dealt with the idea of the inner-self, and its relation to society and to a higher power. They were all concerned with soul-care. However, interest in a type of psychological idea continued to grow throughout the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation. "Calvin reflected deeply on sin, grace, knowledge, faith and the nature of the Christian Life" (Johnson, p.13).
The first person recorded to have used the word "psychology" was Soren Kierkegaard. He wrote about, "the nature of personhood, sin, anxiety and despair, the unconscious (before Freud was even born!), subjectivity, and human and spiritual development from a deeply Christian perspective" (Johnson, p. 14). He became the father of a modern approach to psychological theory.
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